Leisure
![Public parks were initially set aside for recreation and leisure and sport](/Images/godic/202502/16/Tompkins_Square_Park_Central_Knoll5926.jpg")
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![GI Card Game, Watercolor by James Pollock, U. S. Army Vietnam Combat Artists Team IV (CAT IV 1967). During the Vietnam War soldiers waiting to go on patrol would sometimes spend their leisure time playing cards. Courtesy National Museum of the United States Army.](/Images/godic/202502/16/VietnamCombatArtCAT04JamesPollockGICardgame5927.jpg")
Leisure has been defined as a quality of experience or as free time.
Free time is time spent away from business, work, job hunting, domestic chores and education. It also excludes time spent on necessary activities such as eating and sleeping. From a research perspective, this approach has the advantages of being quantifiable and comparable over time and place. Leisure as experience usually emphasizes dimensions of perceived freedom and choice. It is done for "its own sake", for the quality of experience and involvement. Other classic definitions include Thorsten Veblen's (1899) of "nonproductive consumption of time." Different disciplines have definitions reflecting their common issues: for example, sociology on social forces and contexts and psychology as mental and emotional states and conditions.